Patricia Aldworth went to the coastal pulp mill city of Powell River to retire. But the woman who had learned about politics while an Executive Assistant in the West Wing during Lyndon Johnson's Presidency, couldn’t retire. Not when she saw that democracy in Powell River was being fed through the wood chipper.
Aldworth ran for a Council seat in a by-election in this scenic British Columbia city, which has become a retirement destination for Americans. She won.
But not one Council member showed up for Aldworth's swearing-in ceremony; Mayor Stewart Alsgard emerged from his office only when the crowd of Aldworth's supporters overflowed into the hallway.
Councillors and the Mayor had shown up for an in camera meeting just a few hours before Aldworth (pictured above) was sworn in though, on March 4th. At that meeting, they instructed City lawyers to launch a defamation suit against Aldworth and two other pensioners, now known as the Powell River Three. Did I mention that the other two, Winslow Brown and Noel Hopkins, were in their eighties?
Brown tried to wriggle out of this jam. He went to Council on March 11 and, voice quivering, apologized. "I had no idea how far the city was prepared to go. I'm a pensioner on a fixed income. I could never afford to fight this lawsuit in court. If I tried, it would financially destroy me, [I would] lose my home and family." At the end of this groveling, Brown handed his letter to the City Clerk and asked, 'So, is it ended?"
It had not ended.
A few weeks later, Mayor Stewart Alsgard (photo above) publicly reiterated his position that the City had been defamed and had a right to take legal action against the Powell River Three and anybody else who criticized them.
"Sounding more like a Soviet apparatchik than a Canadian," Vancouver Sun columnist Daphne Bramham wrote, "Alsgard went on to say the defamation suit provided a tremendously important lesson for the community's young leaders about 'courtesy' and 'mutual respect'."
"I can't imagine a more regressive lesson in democracy," said John Dixon, Secretary of the BC Civil Liberties Association. Dixon has a home in Powell River and went into the local newspaper office to place an ad to sell his motorcycle, only to see the public humiliation of Cecil Brown's apology splashed over the front page.
There is a name for the type of lawsuit that the Powell River Three are facing: SLAPP, Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation.
The City’s decision to sue the pensioners came after the Mayor and Council decided they'd like to borrow 6.5 million to redevelop the north harbor. Even though there was a by- election coming up (the one that Aldworth would win), Council decided not to let citizens vote on the borrowing but to instead require opponents to go to City Hall to fill out a form. Ten percent of eligible voters – roughly 1,000 people – would have had to make the trek down to City Hall to put a stop to this borrowing. Outraged by this process, a group of pensioners organized to write letters to the editor and hand out copies of the forms at the mall, even helping people fill them out. It was involvement in this activity by the Powell River Three that prompted the Mayor to give them a SLAPP up the side of the head.
“No government should be allowed to sue its citizens for defamation regardless of what is said,” Aldworth told the Vancouver Sun at the beginning of May. “It really goes to the underpinnings of democracy. If you don’t allow citizens to criticize their government, then the government can get away with anything.” And Aldworth, who earned a law degree at Georgetown after leaving the West Wing, noted that because the Charter of Rights and Freedoms only came into effect in 1982, there is not yet much case law upholding the right to free speech.
Aldsworth also said -- and I've been saying this for years -- that Canadians aren’t as well educated about their rights or as willing to stand up for them as Americans.
“No government should be allowed to sue its citizens for defamation regardless of what is said,” Aldworth told the Vancouver Sun at the beginning of May. “It really goes to the underpinnings of democracy. If you don’t allow citizens to criticize their government, then the government can get away with anything.” And Aldworth, who earned a law degree at Georgetown after leaving the West Wing, noted that because the Charter of Rights and Freedoms only came into effect in 1982, there is not yet much case law upholding the right to free speech.
Aldsworth also said -- and I've been saying this for years -- that Canadians aren’t as well educated about their rights or as willing to stand up for them as Americans.
Dixon wrote a letter to the Mayor and Council asking them to drop the lawsuit. He pointed out that in Ontario, the courts ruled against municipalities in 2006 that had launched SLAPP suits against citizens. In one Justice Kenneth Pedlar wrote: “If governments were entitled to sue citizens who are critical, only those with the means to defend civil actions would be able to criticize government entities.”
If the City doesn't back down, the BCCLA intends to take the issue to the BC Supreme Court and ask them to do what the Ontario courts have done – declare that a government cannot sue it’s own citizens.
In Canada, Powell River is everywhere
The problem in Canada is not strictly in Powell River; the problem is that in Canada Powell River is everywhere. What Bramham called "Soviet apparatchiks" are not only operating openly in the government of Powell River, they are operating openly under Mayor Sullivan in the City of Vancouver, they are operating full tilt at the Vancouver School Board, and they are operating openly in Human Rights Commissions across Canada.
The case of Vancouver homeless man William "Bill" Simpson left no doubt that Soviet apparatchiks are well ensconced in the City of Vancouver government. When Simpson was elected to the Board of the Directors of the City of Vancouver's Carnegie Community Centre, one of Mayor Sullivan's henchwomen banished him to the sidewalk outside. Jacquie Forbes-Roberts, General Manager of Community Services, wrote a letter to Simpson a couple of weeks after he was elected, banning him "indefinitely" from the Carnegie Centre. When City management staff Ethel Whitty and Dan Tetrault hand-delivered Simpson the letter on behalf of Forbes-Roberts, Whitty told him that he would not even be allowed into the building to attend Board meetings.
The case of Vancouver homeless man William "Bill" Simpson left no doubt that Soviet apparatchiks are well ensconced in the City of Vancouver government. When Simpson was elected to the Board of the Directors of the City of Vancouver's Carnegie Community Centre, one of Mayor Sullivan's henchwomen banished him to the sidewalk outside. Jacquie Forbes-Roberts, General Manager of Community Services, wrote a letter to Simpson a couple of weeks after he was elected, banning him "indefinitely" from the Carnegie Centre. When City management staff Ethel Whitty and Dan Tetrault hand-delivered Simpson the letter on behalf of Forbes-Roberts, Whitty told him that he would not even be allowed into the building to attend Board meetings.
Forbes-Roberts' revealed in her letter that Simpson's crime was one of free speech. He operated a website, she noted, which "features links" to the Downtown Eastside Enquirer blog which has criticized Carnegie staff. The blog had revealed such taxpayer rip-offs on the part of staff as the semi-regular locking of doors to computer and education services which they were funded to provide to the poor. Lawyer Gregory Bruce wrote to the City, reminding Forbes-Roberts that the concept of guilt by association was "contrary to the rule of law". She did not reinstate Simpson.
It became clear in the Simpson case that City of Vancouver staff were functioning as thought police. When questions were raised at a Carnegie Community Relations Meeting last summer about the lack of grounds for barring Simpson, Whitty defended the barring by stating, "He said he was proud of the blogger." This thought policing by Whitty was actually caught on tape.
Rachel Davis was one of the few Carnegie Board members who opposed the banning of a duly elected Board member from the building and Board meetings. And what did it get her? The Board held a special meeting following a regular Board meeting, when she was on her way home to pay her babysitter, and decided to send her a letter asking her to resign. Davis didn't back down. Did I mention she was born in the U.S.A.?
Photo: Ken Denike, Vancouver School Board Trustee
If you want a textbook case of Soviet apparatchiks shutting down free speech, though, look at the Vancouver School Board. Look at what the VSB did to a woman who wrote a letter to the VSB criticizing their handling of bullying complaints that she and others had independently lodged against a physically and verbally abusive teacher. In the letter, the critic stated that she intended to campaign in the upcoming tightly-contested School Board election about VSB "duplicity" in the handling of bullying complaints. Upon receiving the critic's letter, the VSB quickly resorted to a tactic that was used against political dissidents in the former Soviet Union and continues to be used against dissidents in China: political psychiatry. The VSB abused political influence to arrange, under pretenses the police officer involved admits they knew to be fraudulent, to have their critic subjected to a psychiatric assessment.
The VSB arranged to have Car 87 -- a police car containing an armed police officer and a male psychiatric nurse -- arrive unannounced at their critic's home to perform the psych assessment. Car 87 is an ideal tool for smearing political adversaries as it works like this: even if you're cleared, you're never really cleared. A "Car 87" notation remains adjacent to your name on the police computer system for "99 years".
A few hours after the Car 87 visit, Police School Liaison Sergeant Lester told the critic in a taped telephone call that the VSB had given him a copy of her letter which he read and emphasized to the VSB that there was "nothing untoward" about the letter. (Her letter to the VSB was the sole evidence submitted to him by the VSB in support of the visit, a fact he confirmed during the taped call.) Despite Lester's protests about lack of evidence, the VSB pressured him, providing no additional evidence, until he approved the visit. "It was clear-cut case of fraud," says the targeted critic.
Photo: Ken Denike, Vancouver School Board TrusteeIf you want a textbook case of Soviet apparatchiks shutting down free speech, though, look at the Vancouver School Board. Look at what the VSB did to a woman who wrote a letter to the VSB criticizing their handling of bullying complaints that she and others had independently lodged against a physically and verbally abusive teacher. In the letter, the critic stated that she intended to campaign in the upcoming tightly-contested School Board election about VSB "duplicity" in the handling of bullying complaints. Upon receiving the critic's letter, the VSB quickly resorted to a tactic that was used against political dissidents in the former Soviet Union and continues to be used against dissidents in China: political psychiatry. The VSB abused political influence to arrange, under pretenses the police officer involved admits they knew to be fraudulent, to have their critic subjected to a psychiatric assessment.
The VSB arranged to have Car 87 -- a police car containing an armed police officer and a male psychiatric nurse -- arrive unannounced at their critic's home to perform the psych assessment. Car 87 is an ideal tool for smearing political adversaries as it works like this: even if you're cleared, you're never really cleared. A "Car 87" notation remains adjacent to your name on the police computer system for "99 years".
A few hours after the Car 87 visit, Police School Liaison Sergeant Lester told the critic in a taped telephone call that the VSB had given him a copy of her letter which he read and emphasized to the VSB that there was "nothing untoward" about the letter. (Her letter to the VSB was the sole evidence submitted to him by the VSB in support of the visit, a fact he confirmed during the taped call.) Despite Lester's protests about lack of evidence, the VSB pressured him, providing no additional evidence, until he approved the visit. "It was clear-cut case of fraud," says the targeted critic.
Car 87 visits are restricted by legislation to instances in which there is evidence that an individual is at "imminent" risk of killing themselves or others. The only thing the critic was at risk of killing was the slim chance that the NPA School Board had of retaining power. The critic could prove that an NPA trustee had been assuring the public via television that bullying complaints were being taken seriously, when in fact correspondence being received by complainants indicated otherwise.
When the critic obtained a copy of the psych report, she discovered that the psych nurse, Don Getz, after being briefed by the VSB, had entered "freedom of information requests" as the sole reason for the Car 87 visit. She had made two or three routine freedom of information requests over a period of a year for documents from her file. Georgina Kosich, the VSB clerk who processed Freedom of Information requests was presented to Constable Michelle Sevigny and nurse Getz as the primary witness in the case, and met with them to release the critic's freedom of information requests. Kosich apparently fraudulently concealed from the psych nurse and cop, the letters she had sent the critic encouraging her to submit freedom of information requests to the VSB.
Not only did the critic discover from reading the psych report that her ability to access documents under the Freedom of Information Act was presented as socially deviant, so too were signs of an intellectual life visible in the home-office space where psych nurse Don Getz and Constable Michelle Sevigny interviewed her. A computer surrounded by papers and books, and two bookshelves stuffed with books, were rubricized in the psych report as 'clutter'. The VSB were now burners.
Even the fact that the critic had been competent and responsible enough to substantiate all claims in her letter to the VSB was viewed by the psych nurse -- after he was briefed by the VSB -- as an indicator of mental illness as it made the letter "a little long". He admitted he had not personally read the letter.
As Getz and Sevigny left the critic's apartment, she commented to Getz that it was the election a couple of weeks away that had prompted this psych assessment. He agreed with her! She included this fact in a written complaint lodged with the VSB immediately after the visit. Getz has never disagreed with this statement.
The VSB's pre-election exercise in political psychiatry was successful. The critic was sufficiently terrorized that she abandoned her plans to campaign against the NPA in the election.
Canadians Opposing Political Psychiatry have responded to the failure of the VSB to address their history of political psychiatry by organizing, as an "absolute last resort", an international boycott of diplomas issued by the Vancouver School Board.
Canadians Opposing Political Psychiatry have responded to the failure of the VSB to address their history of political psychiatry by organizing, as an "absolute last resort", an international boycott of diplomas issued by the Vancouver School Board.
Shortly before this Car 87 terror was inflicted by VSB on a potential election campaigner, the outgoing President of the BC Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils, Reggi Balabanov, had sounded an alarm about the use of police to intimidate bullying complainants. Complainants were too often finding police showing up on their doorsteps, Balabanov said, resulting in a definite "chill" on the willingness of citizens to pursue school bullying complaints.
But no discussion of the duck-taping of the mouths of Canadians would be complete without a mention of publicly funded Human Rights Commissions across Canada. Originally set up as inexpensive forums for handling discrimination complaints such as those against landlords and employers, Human Rights Commissions have morphed into thought police operating kangaroo courts. Both the Ontario Human Rights Commission and the B.C. Human Rights Commission have targeted writer Mark Steyn, a Canadian living in New Hampshire, after Macleans magazine published a well supported piece by Steyn on Islamists. The Alberta Human Rights Commission has targeted Ezra Levant, the former publisher of the Western Standard, for publishing cartoons of the prophet Mohammed. Levant had published the cartoons as a pro free speech statement, supporting publications around the world which had done the same.
Human Rights Commissions are always your best bet if you don't have a leg to stand on in a real court. They will use taxpayer's dollars to pay your legal fees, while they bankrupt your critic. On the Vancouver blog, Covenant Zone, where truepeers, a Canadian, and dag, an American from Idaho, monitor this racket, there is a link to a column by the Ottawa Citizen's David Warren:
But no discussion of the duck-taping of the mouths of Canadians would be complete without a mention of publicly funded Human Rights Commissions across Canada. Originally set up as inexpensive forums for handling discrimination complaints such as those against landlords and employers, Human Rights Commissions have morphed into thought police operating kangaroo courts. Both the Ontario Human Rights Commission and the B.C. Human Rights Commission have targeted writer Mark Steyn, a Canadian living in New Hampshire, after Macleans magazine published a well supported piece by Steyn on Islamists. The Alberta Human Rights Commission has targeted Ezra Levant, the former publisher of the Western Standard, for publishing cartoons of the prophet Mohammed. Levant had published the cartoons as a pro free speech statement, supporting publications around the world which had done the same.
Human Rights Commissions are always your best bet if you don't have a leg to stand on in a real court. They will use taxpayer's dollars to pay your legal fees, while they bankrupt your critic. On the Vancouver blog, Covenant Zone, where truepeers, a Canadian, and dag, an American from Idaho, monitor this racket, there is a link to a column by the Ottawa Citizen's David Warren:
"The notion that 'freedom of speech is an American concept' -- I am quoting Dean Steacy, principal "mediator" (i.e. thought-crime investigator) for the Canadian Human Rights Commission -- is proving sadly true in the limited sense that most of the money donated to the various legal defense funds has come, via Internet, from outraged citizens of the U.S."
Warren asked Canadians to divert donations intended for the Conservative Party of Canada to the defense funds of some of those targeted for these Kafkaesque prosecutions. He believes that action could jolt Prime Minister Stephen Harper out of the "sleepiness" from which he and so many other Canadians are suffering as the right to free speech is blungeoned to death.
What is to be done? Maybe Canada needs more Americans.
11 comments:
My original comment was garbled. This is the same thing only different:
The socialist Death Hippies run a camp for adults, and it's called Canada. It's a camp wherein adults are children who must do as they are told, must behave properly or face punishment, Canada as sort of like kindergaarten for grown-ups, where misbehaving, like talking back to the nanny or speaking out when told to be silent, ends in up bad things coming down, like losing ones job, home, even ones life in a meaningful sense. Piss-off the Death Hippies who run this camp, and find yourself in big trouble. To offend the Death Hippies, (Ethanol, for example,) is to find oneself possibly on the street, ones banishment enforced by the might of the state, and with no recourse to legitimate authority, even if, unlike Bill Simpson, for example, you're filthy rich like Mcleans Magazine.
Yes, you can be rich and corporate like Mcleans, or famous and funny like Mark Styne, but it's not better than being a Simpson. In fact it's a lot worse 'cause there's infinitely more to lose if you have something to start with. Piss-off Ethanol and her buddies: face misery in the camp that is Canada. Piss them off? Yes, say the wrong thing. Same rule that applies at a biker bar. You know-- you don't go up to the giant guy with the tattoos and suggest he might be psychologically mal-adjusted and in need of counseling. You know you don't do that. And you know, or you should and you soon will, that you don't go to a Death Hippie and say anything at all but how grateful you are that she or he or they are giving you so much of their time and their love and their concern and shit like that. Like a gang in a biker bar, you know what you can do among them, or you get stomped. The difference between the average bikers and the social worker Death Hippies in Canada is that the bikers aren't out looking for trouble all the time. Bikers don't really care what you do so long as you don't piss them off. But the Ethanols of the nation are looking all the time for anything at all to fuck you over. Look at Simpson, at Rachel Davis, at any number of folks at the Carnegie Centre banned and barred for speaking out-of-turn. Or even not. "Were you Looking at Me?" That'll do it. Harassment. You don't Look at a biker. You don't Look at a Death Hippie. Same game, different players.
If you're broke, the Death Hippies like Ethanol (and that other creature) will stomp you right away. At best, if you're filthy rich like Mcleans Magazine, you might wait a few years till they stomp you, till you piss away millions on legal fights; and even then you could well lose to the Death Hippies. You can't fight City Hall. Nor should you, because you're innately childish, according to the state, not a real adult, simply a signature on a form, one who must be tended and minded.
And if you aren't rich, if you have little or no money, woe is you, pal. You are not only 'On the Street like Simpson,' you could well end up dead, like far too many others, those whose names and faces you know all too well. I call these minder parasites who manage the lives of the poor Death Hippies. It's not spite. Look at the dead. Look at the numbers of the dead who would still be living if not for the minding of the Death Hippies. If not for their sharing and caring, many people would be living now, perhaps in jail for being assholes, but alive rather than dead because the Death hippies decided they, not the people involved, know better how others should live. Social work turns living people into zombie children who die like dogs, treated like dogs, like pets; and if the pet-people run out and get killed by cars, well, not to worry, there are others pet-people to replace them. No rules, no responsibility, it ain't your fault, man. Let Ethanol and her lot live your life for you, let them take care of your needs and wants, let them say you're OK living like dog, and let them toss you scraps, which is what they do for a living. And the death toll goes up and up. But don't say a thing about the death toll. Don't mention that by turning people into infants who must be tended by the social-working class the people who are least able to tend to themselves will do nothing at all till they die. Leave it all to careerist baby-sitters till people die. Say nothing.
Say anything at all that upsets the Death Hippies, and find yourself in trouble with the state: Simpson, Rachel, Styne, Levant, Kathy, you, me, local retirees in Powell River, any of us at all.
The issue is sort of about "Free Speech." Who really cares about that? You can't piss off a biker in a biker bar, and you can't piss-off a Povertarian in Canada. That's the nature of things, and we live with it. If you say something the Povertarians don't like, you get stomped. It's pretty simple. The Povertarians decide what you can and what you cannot say. It's not up to you to decide because you, dear reader, are not a real human being. You are an infant in the universe, a child who needs to be told what to do, and how to live. You have to be told how to get along with other children, and if you can't learn that, out on the street you go, no more time at the kindergaarten that is the nation. In fact, the cops will come for you if you really piss-off the Povertarians. It's all connected, Ethanol to the city admin. to the city cops, and so on. What chance do you have? And for what, anyway? Why do you think it's important to speak your mind about anything? Freedom? Who wants that? Stand in line for a hand-out instead, like at school in the cafeteria. Free speech? Why?
If you are Rachel or Simpson or some retired Americans in Canada living in some small town or if you're a big Canadian magazine or a blogger or whoever. Just shut up. Free speech?
There's an Austrian psychologist who moved to America before the Nazis took over back in the last century, his name is Erich Fromm. He left so he didn't get murdered by people who didn't like what he was saying and writing. Here's a bit of what he wrote:
"We have been compelled to recognize that millions in Germany were as eager to surrender their freedom as their fathers were to fight for it; that instead of wanting freedom, they sought ways of escape from it; that other millions were indifferent and did not believe the defense of freedom to be worth fighting and dying for. We also recognize that the crisis of democracy is not a particularly Italian or German problem, but one confronting every modern state. ....
[F]reedom is not less endangered if attacked in the name of anti-fascism than in that of outright Fascism. This truth has been so forcefully formulated by John Dewey that I express the thought in his words: 'The serious threat to our democracy' he says, 'is not the existence of foreign totalitarian states. It is the existence within our own personal attitudes and within our own institutions of conditions which have given a victory to external authority, discipline, uniformity and dependence upon The Leader in foreign countries. The battlefield is also here-- within ourselves and our institutions.' "1.
Free speech? If you have that right, next thing you'll be saying something you shouldn't say. You might be right about what you say, but you still shouldn't say it. You might well say something about Povertarians, things that might hurt their feelings or make them look like fools who run roughshod over the rights of homeless people. You might say something in defense of homeless people. You might even blog about people who get stomped on by Povertarians. And where will it end? You might want to say something, or you might want to read something the Povertarians don't like, so they should go to blogs and pretend to be someone else, and they should leave vile hate rants about people so the blogger is blamed for putting such stuff on the Internet. They should work for the government, get paid a ton of cash, use a lady's Internet connection from down the street so they don't get caught doing this crap, and then they should take a law suit to their former employers at the Human Rights Commission and file suit so they can get a conviction against the people they set up, and they should pocket about $50,000 each time they pull this stunt. They shouldn't have to pay for legal costs, but those they sue should. And they shouldn't have to follow the laws because it wouldn't be fair to them. So they should-- OOPS, they do-- they win 100 percent of each and every lawsuit they file. Who'd a thunk it? Do it to bloggers in Ontario, or just get some bigwig at City hall to write a letter to ban a homeless guy in Vancouver from the Carnegie Centre, cause he's got no money to take. And get rid of that damned Rachel. Who cares how. Free speech? Nope, it ain't free when it costs $50,000 plus legal fees for a case you cannot ever win no matter what.
Say anything at all that upsets the Death Hippies, and find yourself in big trouble with the state: Simpson, Rachel, Styne, Levant, Kathy, you, me, people living in retirement on the coast who piss-off some local politicians, any of us at all. free speech? It's not worth fighting for. It's not worth "violence" and "war" and all that bad stuff like our elders did with the Nazis. Rather, we should all stay silent and let Ethanol and that lot tell us what to think and what to say. Then everything will be just fucking perfect. Free speech? You'd say something!
Here in Vancouver it looks like we get to witness Mcleans Magazine being sued by Death Hippies coming up soon. What happened? Mcleans published a chapter from a book by Mark Styne. Mark Styne quoted a Kurd from Iraq, a guy living in Norway. The Norwegian government is trying to deport the guy but no one will have him. And Styne quoted him. He shouldn't be doing that, and the government is going after Mcleans because the magazine reprinted a line from his book. Styne isn't being harassed for writing something in favor of terrorism; he's being harassed for quoting a Muslim who incites terrorism, which, according the the government, is a bad thing to quote. It makes the man look bad. It's that free speech thing again. And that, as we now know, is "an American thing"
Here's Styne's blog:
Kathy Shaidle adds:
What a difference twenty years makes. And we have liberal self-aggrandizing bathroom Nazi hunters and cowardly, careerist Conservative hacks to thank for this, not just arrogant, ignorant Muslim belligerents.
Those of you who've been placing your trust and hope in electoral party politics -- and not just on this issue -- are deluded. By all means continue to write letters and sign petitions, but bear in mind that they will mostly be either ignored or will not be able to change the minds of a sufficient number of time serving cowards.
In June, the first Canadian Islamic Congress complaint comes before the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal. Shortly thereafter we will lose and Maclean's will appeal to the Court of Queen's Bench or whatever it's called. And at that point every Rob Nicholson type in the Canadian parliament will be able to say: "Well, I gather these matters are presently before the courts, so it would be inappropriate for me to comment." And that will be that.
http://www.steynonline.com/content/blogsection/14/128/
You see, if you start out saying things about Ethanol, next thing you'll be saying things about a terrorist in Norway, and eventually you'll be going on about some local politicians in Powell River, Canada. And who are you anyway? You're nobody. If you were a grown-up, then you wouldn't need Ethanol and her lot telling you what to say and what to think and what to eat and when to sleep and where and why. You'd tell Ethanol and her lot to -- well, no, you wouldn't bother even speaking to her because she's a nobody too. That is, unless you need her services, your food stamps. Smile; say, "Thank you, Miss Ethanol," take your sandwich, and go sit somewhere out of the ways so you don't get stomped. No speaking unless you're asked. Unless you're told.
It's not just "free speech." It's about the right to live one own life as one chooses, within the law. But that law is now against the person who defies the Death Hippies. Say something they don't like, and find yourself in big trouble. Of course, it's not worth fighting for. You're always fighting, which is why Ethanol and her lot have to control you. You're just not able to live your own lives without fucking them up. Take your sandwich and thank god for it that you have one. No, forget that. Thank Ethanol.
1. Erich Fromm, Escape From Freedom. Avon: New York. !941; rpt 1966; pp. 19-20.
Thanks, RS. I think Canadians just need to be reminded of a time, not so long ago, when everyone knew this was a free country. Keith martin is one MP who remembers; and he's a Liberal. Shame on Harper: he is on the record as having said (in 1990 I think) that the "human rights" commissions were becoming totalitarian; and now in power he has still to speak out on the current scandal/debate.
truepeers,
Stephen Harper is even being accused of launching a SLAPP suit himself, shutting down Liberal questions about an alleged insurance bribe to Chuck Cadman. I was reading about it yesterday. I had heard about Harper's lawsuit but I had not seen it framed as a SLAPP suit.
I saw an interview with Keith Martin the other day and he is quitting politics because he believes that MPs have little power to change things.
dag,
I like the biker analogy. The Carnegie povertarians have a lot of muscle behind them; they have a security force -- plain-clothed to look egalitarian -- which backs up staff if somebody talks back. When Lucy Alderson banned Bill Simpson from the Learning Centre for suspected blogging, she did it with a security guard, Skip, present, even though Simpson had never in all his years at Carnegie shown an inclination toward violence, or ever acted in a threatening manner.
I found your Dewey quote interesting too: "The serious threat to our democracy is not the existence of foreign totalitarian states. It is the existence within our own personal attitudes and within our own institutions of conditions which have given a victory to external authority, discipline, uniformity. . .”
This is interesting because when the hippies were young in the sixties, they were the generation that challenged external authority. Now that they’re in power, they pretend to be egalitarian but they’re not. Watch how quickly Ethel Whitty’s egalitarian pretense dissolved when she was pressed by a few Board members to justify the banning of Simpson, a duly elected Board member, from Carnegie. Whitty reminded the Board that she really wasn’t required to justify herself to them, that she didn’t answer to them. Her egalitarian pretense developed a helluva big crack at that moment. Then she tried to patch up the crack, telling the Board that she had come to the meeting to answer questions “out of respect”. She used the word "respect" two or three times. She managed to give the Board the middle finger and then remind them that she respected them.
Former Director Michael Clague was no better. He played the egalitarian card to the max and continues to do so, pretending he’s a friend to the poor. He used to put up posters around Carnegie with a we're all a “family” theme. Ick! If Carnegie members were his family, he was a patriarchal tyrant. I managed to get hold of a copy of a letter a woman got from him which supports her claim that when she was banned from all computers in the building, Clague forced her to serve her sentence before he would even meet with her to give her the reason why she was barred so that she could appeal. How do you appeal a sentence that’s already been served? She says all this happened after she started complaining about the Senior’s Lounge coffee seller telling her to lose weight, dye her hair, come home and watch porno with him, etc. (A Board member corroborated her story by saying that he coffee seller had been doing the same to her.) After Clague stripped her of her right to due process when she was barred from City of Vancouver facilities, he tried to patch up the crack in his egalitarian pretense by stating that it would be nice to "get to know you." This guy got the Order of Canada. Shame on Michael Jean.
What we're dealing with here are full patch povertarians.
Truepeers has linked at Covenant Zone to your article here, in part because this issue of Simpson and Rachel Davis and others is the same story that affects those perhaps better known in Canada and the world, Mark Styne, for example. He's well-known and more, and others are not so much; but all share the same persecution on the front-line of the fight for the retention of our rights to free speech and assembly. It affects a brilliant columnist in the world's media, and it affects a homeless man. This is not some abstract thing happening to people we can't ever be or want to be. It is our fight because we are all at risk from the Death Hippies. I mean it in the physical sense as much as in the abstract. It's personal in the lives of everyone in the world, particularly in the West, specifically in Canada, of all places. Who would think that Canada is a deep centre of fascism?
Who thinks? knows? cares?
Look at this; I went to the bookshop this evening and asked four people working there if they know of Mark Styne. Keep in mind this is an artsy and intellectual bookshop, not for comix and porno mags, but for a serious selection of books for people who read seriously. One of the four had heard of him, seeing the name in a Mcleans magazine at a barbershop, but otherwise the name is unknown. That's the state of the intelligentsia here.
Look close to home, see Simpson, see Rachel, see others banned and harassed for speaking or thinking impure thoughts; see people thrown out of the corridors of Left fascism.
people on the Downtown EAstside are finding themselves at the heart of a world-changing event, closer to the heart of this struggle than any would have ever imagined they could be to anything important, and those who should know are totally clueless. The Jacobins, le sans culottes, come to the rescue if anyone at all.
Are you ready for this fundamental change in the world? Downtown Eastsiders are making history-- if they go just this one step further and care.
Dga, but had they heard of Mark Steyn?[-:>
As usual, 25 per cent of the intelligentsia goes for the occasional haircut, and that would make it a "Yes."
"He's a conservative, isn't he? But not one of the bad ones...?"
Thank God for amazon.com.
dag,
I think truepeers was kidding you about your misspelling of Steyn as Styne.
He kept telling me, "My name is isn't Franklin. It' Mark."
So I quit calling him Franklin and just referred to him as Stein. He's so picky. Sheesh.
It's going around: "I like that - Bloodhound Barbara Hall, not sure who that Stein fella is though;)"
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